Steel maker on hiring blitz: retirement opens up jobs at Essar steel Algoma.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: SKILLED TRADES

The North American steel industry may be in the dumper but that doesn't mean jobs aren't available.

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In Sault Ste. Marie, when jobs become available it doesn't take long for word to circulate. Despite the steel plate maker's boom-and-bust cycles, landing employment at the city's largest private employer is still a prized opportunity.

The company is on a hiring blitz looking for both trades and labour in departments across the complex to replenish the ranks of the 3,500 unionized workforce.

Since starting their hiring campaign last fall, the company is looking to fill a full range of positions, including electrical and mechanical maintenance technicians, bricklayers, metallurgists, engineers, along with managers, supervisors and specialists in cokemaking, IT, accounting, and occupational health and safety.

When the economy crashed in the fall of 2008, so did Essar Algoma's order book. It was tough sledding in the months that followed as the company engaged in temporary layoffs and proposed its unionized workers go down to four-day work weeks to cut labour costs.

Out of those measures came a retirement incentive program. Many took the company up on its offer. With an average employee age at 47, the attrition rate is up and stands only to increase in the coming years, opening up job opportunities at Essar in virtually all departments.

"We're seeing a large number of retirements," said Brenda Stenta, Essar Steel Algoma's manager of corporate communications, with 180 retirements in 2009, up from 140 the previous year. Essar is concentrating, not so much on attracting new workers for entry-level positions, but on prospective employees with some experience under their belt. Stenta said the steel industry's historic hiring cycles come into play.

Many in Sault Ste. Marie remember the hiring freeze at the former Algoma Steel in the 1990s, indicative of the tough economic times the company and the entire industry experienced.

"There was a gap of a 10-year period when there was little hiring in the steel industry and we started hiring again in the early 2000s."

As people advanced internally in the organization, mid-level supervisory positions needed to be filled. Those positions are opening up again.

Currently there are 75 remaining vacancies, with half of those in the trades. There's a particularly strong need for experienced electrical maintenance technicians. Company personnel manager John DeLorenzi said the response to the job...